When I saw the remake of A for Andromeda on BBC4 earlier this year I heard that they'd done a remake of Quatermass the previous year, before I had BBC4 and was quite disappointed to have missed it. So I was pleased to find it had been released on DVD, and it made a nice change from Doctor Who on my rental list.

I did have to get up in the middle to work out who the journalist was (Brian from Teachers, which was a bit surreal) but I really enjoyed it. I've not seen the original to compare it against, mind you. It was quite creepy towards the end but I was a bit disappointed by the way they wrapped it all up neatly. Mind you, I was waiting for the world to end and didn't expect them to save it at all.

I've also read a whole load of books, so will put them behind a cut-tag thingy.Read more...

Sadlers Wells - Dress Rehearsal and Back Stage
Standard Wells books by this point with the extra excitement of some of it being set in the Lakes District, where I've been. Plus I only have two to go now, although we are getting quite ridiculously rare (I haven't seen the last one for less than £40 yet...)

Lois McMaster Bujold - Memory
It's interesting that the previous book was about Mark trying to work out who he is, then this one is about Miles trying to work out who he is. As much as I enjoyed that part the main plot of Illyan's assasion sort of doesn't start till halfway through and it's blindingly obvious whodunnit, given we only have one suspect. Only three to go now!

I'm nearly a quarter of the way there! It's just a pity we're nearly halfway through the year...

34.1cm / 155cm(22.0%)

Doctor Who - Unnatural History
This is the second Eighth Doctor book I've read and manages to be another parallel Earth type one. It's a good introduction to Sam because the one in this is an alternate one. Sadly, though, I didn't like this Doctor or Fitz or the original Sam. Or the story. It was good for a couple of days and 2cm and the charity shop.

Sadlers Wells - Principal Role and Swan Feather
I read somewhere that all the Sadlers Wells books are the same story. That's certainly true of Swan Feather: Sylvia Swan has pretty much exactly the same story as Jane and Ella and Rosanna. These are the first two of the series I hadn't read originally. They're quite interesting for a day, though. After this they get quite horribly expensive, for books.

Lois McMaster Bujold - Mirror Dance
I was slightly intimidated by this being 600 pages and having lots of Mark in. It seemed to go by quickly, though because I really liked this one. There were some horrifying things that Mark did, and had done to him, that were...horrible. I was really interested to see Mark discover who he is. And it had Cordelia in it, yay! And I loved Miles thinking, near the end, that although he doesn't pick up nearly as many women as Ivan, he can't seem to put them down.

I was expecting last night's Doctor Who to change my opinions of their cliffhangers. But then it was resolved in 2 seconds and took me 2 minutes to work out what was going on (I spent most of that 2 minutes being annoyed it had been resolved so quickly). But I liked the episode, though. It was only when watching it with the commentary that I noticed the Doctor was still wearing his trainers with his DJ! Yay, for the Doctor has made it cool to wear trainers with trousers.

I was supposed to go on the Winchester slouch yesterday but there was engineering works that meant it would have taken three times as long to get there as it should, and I needed the sleep so didn't set my alarm. And consequently woke up too late to get there. So I finished my spring cleaning instead. My haul in the end was:

4 black bin bags of rubbish

4 carrier bags of charity

2 carrier bags of stuff to take home

1 dead moth and 1 live spider (it didn't live for long) and 1 wasp that briefly came in and was persuaded to go back out the window

more space on my bookshelves than I actually know what to do with (it won't last)

So, today I decided to have a day of doing nothing. I ended up watching most of an episode of The New Avengers that was on the bonus disk due to having an Emma Peel cameo in it. Except that the cameo was completely pointless. And I couldn't quite see the point of much else of the episode either. It seemed a lot like they'd given Gambit Steed's character and Purdey Cathy/Emma/Tara's. Which made Steed a bit pointless. In all fairness it might not have been the most interesting episode for all I know, but it's certainly not made me want to watch any more.

Happy Birthday, Gemma! (I only knew it was your birthday because I saw it on Una's LJ :))

I read two books while I was away, experiencing long train journeys and long waits for buses:

26.1cm / 155cm(16.8%)

The Colour of Love by Preethi Nair
When I was at Rotary District Conference last month Preethi Nair spoke about how she became an author. It was a really interesting story, and she spoke really well, so I thought I'd try this book. It's a fictionalised account of what she did to follow her dream. I don't know how much of this is real and how much she made up (although the main character's dream is painting rather than writing) but the characters are so realistic. Nina's dad particularly sticks in my mind. The only thing I had trouble with was that it's just straight fiction - I've read nothing but sci-fi & fantasy and history for so long it was strange!

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
This was one of my mum's she recommended to me. She makes good recommendations because this was really good. It was slightly surreal at times, though to be reading about Georgiana in the 1770s and going to houses set up like they would be in the 1770s! Georgiana was a really interesting person, and it was quite an interesting to be a female member of the aristcracy back then. Their lives were so different from ours, in terms of what rights they had.

And a starship meme from Una that has some quite funny options to choose from. This result gave me the funniest weapon and defensive system:Read more...

The Chalet School and Jo/The Chalet School in Camp
I like the Chalet school books, they feel like adult children's books. It's very strange with Jo as Head Girl, though, I still think of her as a naughty middle.

Useful Toil
This is one of mum's and it's short autobiographies of working people from 1820s to 1920s. The introductions to the book, and to each section had useful information but were really boring. The autobigraphies were really interesting, though. Some of the domestic servants were so badly off: they worked unbelievably long hours and were treated quite badly. Some of the people were so badly off they were admitted to hospital with malnutrition. What some of the women did during the First World War was interesting as well, as they found new lives working in factories.

Doctor Who: The Domino Effect
This was free with the SFX Doctor Who special. I got all excited with it being the Eighth Doctor, but then I remembered I was thinking of the Big Finish version with Charley. The actual thing was quite interesting but I didn't understand the mystery there, or whodunnit, and I felt like I missed something important before the book started, and it didn't quite finish either. Perhaps that's why they gave it away.

At lunchtime the other day someone was talking about organising her upcoming wedding in July, and how she didn't have many more weekends left to do it in. And her and someone else agreed you don't want to do that sort of thing in the evening because it's too much like work. I was slightly stunned at this because:
a. what else can you do in the evening (you can't go out every night unless you're made of money)
b. that's actually what I do, specially when it comes to Rotaract.
If I didn't do that, I'd be bored, though. When I wrote a meeting down in my diary the other day I realised I've got Rotaract meetings on the last three Mondays in May.

Anyway, I'm off to the Lake District on Friday, and not back till St George's Day, so you won't be hearing much from me till then. I'll be avoiding all Doctor Who spoilers until I've seen the episodes as well (probably first thing I do while I'm downloading my spam emails).

Two of them were Cheerleaders ones - good for if you don't have a brain. One of them I think I've read before. It was still mostly about the love lifes, though, so pretty standard stuff. The other I quite enjoyed because it was a bit different - about the whole team and how they're affected by what's going on around them. It was a bit quickly solved, though, despite being a thicker book than the other one.

The third book I raced through too: Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton. I've been reading his blog for a while, so it was interesting to get all sorts of backstory into what was going on in his life. He is a good writer and very easy to read. His other book's on my amazon wishlist now!

In theory, I should manage 20,000 words by the end of the year, no problem. Specially as my Remix fic is now in beta.

I am working on something for Back to Middle-earth month, too. What I mainly meant to do was catch up on my LOTR-related reading, but got entirely sidetracked by The Avengers. Which is too full of Steed & Peel getting together for my liking. I have been inspired to write some LOTR though! So expect some later this month.

In entirely unrelated events, in the latest episode of Bugs they had a timer set on releasing what were essentially killer beetles. Given all the high-tech stuff they had in it (including their first CD-R), it was really strange that they were ordinary kitchen timers. Hmm.

The Princess of the Chalet School - The Chalet School books seem a lot less easy to read than the two I've listed below, yet no less interesting. It's interesting to see how their society is structured, because it's written quite a long time ago and set in Austria.

Sweet Valley University (Billie's Secret) - Like everyone else at the time I read Sweet Valley High when I was younger. I think Sweet Valley University started coming out just as I stopped so I've been curious since then to see what they're like. I know this is book 18 but loads seems to have happened since then. Can't beat the original though, I won't be reading any more of them.

Cheerleaders (Feuding) - It's strange, when reading this, how much of the story comes back to me. Mind you, it's all related to their love lives so it's not exactly complicated. It's not bad, though, because the characters are actually interesting.

I seriously need to get back some proper books soon, although it's nice to get through one in a lunchtime.

I felt much more awake for a break. After scrabbling around trying to remember where I put Quantum Leap I moved some CDs and other assorted crap and came across Thought Crimes, which Sel had given me a copy of. The Andreas Katsulas tribute was on there too, and it's really good. I'd forgotten how many stirring speeches G'Kar made. It was very sad to watch.

Thought Crimes, though, I enjoyed. I did spend most of the time trying to work out where I recognised the main character from and eventually decided it must be from Angel. I was right, she was in Angel, and Roswell High. But I was recognising her from The OC. I feel so much better for knowing. As the first episode of a series I'm not certain it had anywhere to go from there, but it was really interesting seeing how she grew and changed.

I've just finished British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide. I couldn't remember why I'd put it on my Amazon wish list, but bought it anyway. I discovered why, when I read the chapter list, and discovered the Blakes 7 chapter author. There were some interesting ideas in it that I hadn't considered before.

Overall I enjoyed it. I really liked the historical aspects of the Quatermass chapter. The nuclear war one is really depressing, though. I'm not entirely convinced by the parallels in the Sapphire and Steel chapter. But as I've not seen it and know very little about the state of the country & politics around 1979 I can't really comment. The only chapter I really disagreed with was the Red Dwarf one. The author talked about how it relates to gender and race. I like it because it's funny, so am admittedly uninteresting in taking it any deeper. But she did go on about the Cat acting the way he does because it's alluding to black Americans. And there was me thinking it was a parody of a cat.

Easter: I had a surf round last night at the Lake District. Which looked vaguely interesting until there was a mention of Hadrian's Wall being not far away. So I'm so going. As my last holidays were in America and Australia I had entirely forgotten the whole point of holidays is castles and bookshops. Although I did get unreasonably excited at going to a Barnes and Noble in America. I've not booked for Conference yet, and my boss was off so I couldn't book any time off. I did establish that because he has holiday I can't do the Lake District and then recover(!) at Conference, so I'll be doing Conference, then the Lake District. I'm amazed it's only a couple of hours from Birmingham, though, because it's a long way North.

Bugs: I sat down to watch Bugs with dinner and all of a sudden there was Robbie! (as in DI Robbie Ross from Taggart). Sounding decidedly un-Scottish, but very cool anyway. Possibly some other stuff happened but frankly who cares. It's Robbie.

And thingy, whatshisname from Yes Minister was on The Avengers last night, looking pretty much exactly the same.

I went home this weekend, which means I came back with a whole load of food and some books. Saturday dad went to the OU in Milton Keynes, so he got up early and consequently we were all awake. Except the cat, who was taken to bed by mum. So we were all wrecked on Saturday.

Saturday was the Blakes 7 Dorset group Christmas party, which was good fun. Although I could have quite happily fallen asleep in front of Hitchhiker's. I could have quite happily fallen asleep in front of Rosemary and Thyme later on as well. As it was cold the cat decided to come to bed with me and slept all night, despite having slept all day (it's a hard life being a cat, obviously). A warm cat on one side is no substitute for quilt on the other, but he did wake me up from a bad dream, so he was forgiven. And also didn't take over too much.

Me and dad had an argument about the CD drive in the Atlantis episode Michael that involved watching the relevant bit of the episode three times, and we still disagree. He thinks Trip just took the CD out with no trouble at all, I think it did involve the usual pulling you have on laptops (well, Dell ones at least, which is what they have on Atlantis). This did, though, lead to a discussion about how they were powering them and just how many they had in the place anyway.

I also made good progress on reading my height in books. I read the latest Seven & Ace Doctor Who on the train on the way home and the other half on the way back. And I read Three Men in a Boat while I was home (which was really funny, if confusing because he keeps going off on a tangent, so you never quite know whether he's talking about that trip or another one). So I am now 4.1cm into my 155cm.